Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home —
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene, — one step enough for me.
Materialism: the downward spiral
Stepping back to reflect on the prevailing conditions across most of the earth will convince most thinking people that materialism has darkened the eyes of many. It’s becoming ever clearer that each generation is more materialistic than that of their parents; and that it’s having a detrimental effect on their physical and mental health. Our children and grandchildren are being engulfed by a tide of commercialism and consumerism which threatens to overwhelm the world in a catastrophe of our own making. However, the crises in the economies around the world, the brutal conflicts, and the destructive environmental impact of modern rates of consumption and wastefulness are leading more people to challenge the way we live our lives.
Inner Peace
There can be no more significant achievement than to gain a measure of inner peace. It is the foundation upon which is built all lasting progress for all men and women. It’s almost impossible to exaggerate its importance for seekers. It is the master-key, the first, middle and final step. At all stages of the path to light, inner peace is both the way and the destination.
Big Daddy and Number One Son
Each fully developed virtue is like a beautiful jewel. Many of our brightest may still lie hidden, still to be mined; or perhaps mined, but still to be cut, or polished and set. These are the latent powers of our inner light, of which most of us are as yet only partly conscious, if at all. They are the unique qualities inherent in our true and higher Self. They develop within, and shine out from, the central awareness of the master within.
However, introspection also reveals a lower side to human nature: a self of unruly lower desires, compulsions, restrictions and a whole host of unhealthy and potentially destructive states of mind. This lower self is the counterpart of the higher and presents us with the hard lessons we have to learn in order for us to progress along our path of return.
The Master Within
At all times there have been men and women who have been aware of a ‘something within’. Even now in the ultra-materialistic West many of us have the sense that while so much of our normal lives seems disconnected from anything we might consider spiritual, this inner something keeps drawing us to look further and deeper into the spiritual side of things. Though the terminology varies, all the leading religions, spiritual philosophies and traditions have something to say about it. The mystical traditions in particular speak of those who have experienced contact or union with the spirit of God within themselves; or sometimes they identify this inner spirit with the higher self, the real individual ego. We can read of the great mystics who’ve been ‘gathered up to God in a cloud of light’, or of those inspired seers, illuminated by the light within, who henceforth know wisdom and love beyond the measure of normal men. The mystic traditions sometimes represent it as a kind of junction with the divine, a mysterious spark from the fire of God. This mysterious something is characterised here as the master within.
Trust in God
We commonly define articles of faith as the set of doctrines a person or a group holds to be true. In a religious context we sometimes refer to believers as members of the Anglican faith or the Hindu faith, for example. Faith in this sense expresses our deeply held belief in the teachings of our religion accepted by us as true despite the impossibility of ‘proving’ them to the satisfaction of the unbeliever or the purely material thinker. We take on trust that they are true because our intuition tells us that they are. At its best, our faith constitutes the substance and the evidence of those truths which our material reason cannot fully know, but we believe because they have been revealed to a higher part of our nature. St Paul’s definition is as good as any:
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. (Hebrews)
The subject is an important one. Reflecting sincerely on our own faith helps us to a better understanding of who we really are and where we truly belong. However, important as it is, this aspect of faith is not the main subject of this article. For the ancient mystical traditions recognise a hidden power in faith which no seeker of truth can afford to ignore; for those who do not gain a measure of it will never travel far along the mystic path. Although it has been alluded to in many different ways in the past, we refer to it here as ‘Trust in God’.
A Response to the Gatha Ahunavaita
May I too, find favour in the sight of God by remembering the wisdom of my soul. That I might give voice to my inarticulate heart, which yearns to praise the Light in the darkness of its forgetfulness.
Thus may I approach Thee, in reverence and awe, Oh Ahura-Mazda, suppliant to Thy great Majesty, lest I should be consumed by Thy blazing Light!
Yet may I grow fair in the gardens of Thy Love, and promise Thee offerings of my harvested fruits; if the wisdom and understanding be mine, the planting is Thine, the nurturing and the ripening all Thine.
And may I marvel at the great Hierarchy under Thee.
For the highest Lords of Heaven, do radiate a cascade of golden blessings into the hearts of humble seekers adrift upon the seas, according to Thy Laws harmonious.
Notes on Beauty
Why are ideas about beauty and the beautiful central to every spiritual tradition, and have been so for as long as we can discover? What has beauty to do with the mystic path? What has led all the truly great thinkers, sages, wise men and women of the past and present to advise their followers to love the beautiful, to seek it out, to attune their minds to it as best they can? And what is it that makes a thing of beauty beautiful? What causes beauty to exist, and what are its effects?
Perhaps the first thing we should note is that beauty manifests on many different levels of being. Each level is brighter, better, truer, more beautiful, more unified and so more powerful than that which is below it. The mystic’s path stretches across these levels, from the material world up through the heavenly to the utterly divine.
